Re: controlling installation from a serial terminal
On Fri, Jan 15, 1999 at 12:56:17PM -0500, James R. Van Zandt wrote:
>
> Enrique Zanardi <ezanardi@ull.es> writes:
> >On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 10:08:57PM -0500, James R. Van Zandt wrote:
> >> I am trying to set up boot files that will allow an installation to be
> >> controlled from a serial terminal. This would let a blind user
> >> install Debian, using a second computer with a terminal emulator and a
> >> speech synthesizer. (I once wrote up such a procedure for installing
> >> Slackware.)
> >
> >There's already support for serial consoles on Sparc and VME/m68k. It's
> >trivial to use that on other architectures where the kernel supports
> >them. It's just a matter of #define SERIAL_CONSOLE on dinstall.h for i386
> >and booting with the proper kernel parameter (console=/dev/ttyS*).
>
> According to my reading, "#define SERIAL_CONSOLE" affects only the
> base system (after the second boot).
>
> >I would try using a 2.1.x kernel. There may be other problems, as the
> >floppies have been tested with 2.0.x kernels only, but it may work.
>
> Okay, I'll try it. I assume it needs to be configured with
> CONFIG_SERIAL=y
> CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE=y
>
> Is that enough to allow dinstall (that is, after the first boot) to be
> controlled via a serial terminal? I expect some change is also needed
> in utilities/busybox/init.c, but so far I have not figured out what.
I think no change is needed in init.c, as the sparc port uses that
currently. There's some weird naming (ttya, ttyb instead of ttyS0, ttyS1)
but I don't know if that's sparc-specific...
--
Enrique Zanardi ezanardi@ull.es
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